Two days after Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's request to Union Home Minister Amit Shah to send top doctors to Ahmedabad to guide local doctors in checking the mortality rate and treating coronavirus infected patients, Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, arrived in the city early Saturday morning and held meetings with the health department officials as well as doctors and nursing staffs treating patients at special COVID-19 hospital.
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AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria landed in the city in a special aircraft with another senior doctor Manish Suneja. They visited the civil hospital, Asarva, where a 1,200-bed special COVID-19 hospital is operational for more than a month. Ahmedabad city with 5,540 cases and 363 deaths is worst hit in the state.
Health officials said that the senior doctors met local doctors, nurses and other staffs and took a virtual tour of entire facilities. Later in a meeting, Guleria said that "the reason behind high mortality rate is late admission of people to hospitals, comorbidity and weaker immunity."
"There is a stigma and fear attached to coronavirus. People fear to approach doctors at early stages since they feel that they will be stigmatized and that's why the delay in approaching doctors. People with mild symptoms should approach doctors immediately as a delay only increases the chances of death. The level of oxygen gets reduced in such people but they don't realise it that proves fatal. The west has termed it as happy hypoxia," Guleria said in the meeting.
He added that to stop the mortality rate, people will have to come forward. He also praised the facilities and treatment methods and said that they were of "international standard."
Meanwhile, the state reported 23 more deaths from the infection on Saturday evening. Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi said that that it was the lowest number of casualties in the past one week. The state also recorded a total of 394 fresh cases, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 7,797, while the death toll jumped to 472.